FFXIV shows what's wrong with MMOs (Not what you think)

[Remedi]

I mean it's certainly better than WoW, who is its main competitor. That universe no longer runs on logic, and you can only "rule of cool" so many times before everything starts seeming normal.

Oh boy if this is true, I've even read some of the books and frankly sometimes seems that charcaters go full retard when the plot demands it or just flip flop when the need arises just to create drama.
I felt this coming with the wrathgate event and should've seen what came after from there.

Anyway on OP: I agree that the story is done better than most but that let's not forget that they also need to back the rest of game with good content.

(besides they could trim the story of ARR a bit imho)

[Tridus]

Oh boy if this is true, I've even read some of the books and frankly sometimes seems that charcaters go full retard when the plot demands it or just flip flop when the need arises just to create drama.
I felt this coming with the wrathgate event and should've seen what came after from there.

Wow had a reasonably coherent story early on. It was never terribly good, but it made enough sense that you could follow it and there was logical progression as to why things happened. There was a pretty strong RP community for a while and we had a lot to work with.

Then it went full on with "change the story to suit whatever we feel like doing this week" and ceased to make any sense whatsoever.

[Divinemights]

Then it went full on with "change the story to suit whatever we feel like doing this week" and ceased to make any sense whatsoever.

WoW's story are from their comic books, no the game.
It is same rip off like Destiny 1 and 2

[Remedi]

Wow had a reasonably coherent story early on. It was never terribly good, but it made enough sense that you could follow it and there was logical progression as to why things happened. There was a pretty strong RP community for a while and we had a lot to work with.

Then it went full on with "change the story to suit whatever we feel like doing this week" and ceased to make any sense whatsoever.

No, wow had no story early on
It thrived with the concept of exploring the warcraft world and had very simplistic story to it because the foxus was exploring the world.
They started going bonkers when they wanted to focus more on story and ppl got the mess that they are giving them now.

[Aylis]

Then it went full on with "change the story to suit whatever we feel like doing this week" and ceased to make any sense whatsoever.

While granted I haven't played since WotLK, from what I gather from playing fly on the wall when friends talk about WoW. It seems that this is largely due to the game showing its age of sorts. Where it reached a point where it had to shake up game play and re-invent game play so much to the point where the story progression was the first thing to get altered. Since game play is largely what keeps players around for the long term, active and logging in without feeling like they're bored or with nothing fun to do.

This might very well happen to FFXIV someday once it's reached that age. If older players are tired of the "formula" and less and less new players come in. Maybe not, only time will tell. FFXIV for now seems to be taking the opposite side of things. Sacrificing game play for story. The formula is the same now as it was back in 2.0, here's the two new dungeons to cap tokens in, here's the new 24 player raid, the new 8 player raid/primal, here's the new savage turns. With next to no shakeups that drastically alter the way the main game is played. The plus side of this being the story will stay coherent always, the downside being the patch cycle will forever be predictable with little to no surprises.

I guess we wait till the 6.0-7.0 era's to see what happens.

[Lium]

??? It's not rare for mmorpgs to have a main storyline throughout the game and I am not sure if you can call the sb story great based on how generic and uninspired it's been so far compared to HW. Lastly just because one thing is better than another that doesn't make said thing "good:. It's like comparing wonder woman to batman v superman, is WW better than BvS? Yes. Then does that make WW a good movie? No.

FFXIV is not without its faults. No game is perfect. I dabble in about 10 MMOs casually. These are the games that have a large storyline that I've played: SWTOR, ESO, GW2, LOTRO, and TSW.

None come close to this game. But that's just my opinion.

[Vstarstruck]

note:
this style is not perfect, some people would like to have not everything locked behind MSQ, even ffxi was not one long thing locking everything (Like for FFXI equivalent, I would not need to beat HW MSQ to access SB areas)

but yes, nice to have a story.

Yoshi P already addressed your point for us.

https://i.imgur.com/VtCUHXa.png

OMG TY fitting for my thread

[SenorPatty]

While I do agree that alot of cookie cutter mmo don't do the story right (especially in the f2p category), FF14's story isn't what I'd like to call consistently good. At times, the narrative seems self-apathetic and derivative and others, fully engaging. I can't really say that's what gives the leg up on other mmos when it comes to FF14.

[Zojha]

MMOs in the West are having a tough time. Mostly because it's all about ilvls and/or PvP ratings. FFXIV is about the story. And that's rare these days.

It's rare in general, because, well... story and MMO don't go very well together.

That's why the vast majority of the MSQ is solo only. The story is largely pushed outside the realm of multiplayer, with all the lengthier cutscenes playing after the group is abandoned and you've left the dungeon, because the one time they didn't do it like that, it went very, very badly. We know that as the Castrum/Praetorium issue. People even go as far as to disable chat to avoid spoilers and let's face it: That Lalafell jumping up and down in a pig suit is just immersion breaking.

Moreover, the story takes up quite a bit of resources, but is a one-and-done kind of deal, whereas the MMO genre lives and breathes repetition to facilitate group play. And the gating the story creates hinders meaningful player interaction, which is the core of MMOs. It's not a very good fit and creates an innate conflict of interest in the playerbase as well.

As such, single-player games and movies are simply far better suited to tell a story as neither have all that baggage and conflicts attached. The prior is superior if you want players to be able to alter the flow of the story, the latter if you just want to tell a fixed story without interaction from the viewers. And it's IMO a very sad thing that this game's story doesn't capitalize on the unique potential of the interactive medium (i.e. a video game) to make the story interactive as well.


Personally, I must confess I don't even care for the MSQ. The only cutscenes I watch are those in sidequests and I regularly find myself cursing when I skip a cutscene that looked interesting out of sheer habit from the MSQ. A long, mandatory story is a pretty meh affair if you dislike the characters and find the plot cringey. At least if that happens in job quests, it doesn't last long, so it's more tolerable.

[Lium]

Snip

To each their own. You sound like the type of player that would be comfortably at home in a game like WoW. And that's TOTALLY cool. I played that game for 13 years. They don't care about story at all. It's all about raiding and gear progression. WoW players have long abandoned any care about story because they realized Blizzard doesn't really care about it. They just retcon and come up with nonsensical stuff because reasons. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. They know their playerbase.

Also, your idea about interactive storytelling in an MMO sounds dubious to me, precisely because of what you pointed out: some player in a pig costume jumping up and down screaming, "GO GO GO", with a name like Fleshsaberforyou. Again, nothing wrong with that. That's people. And that's exactly why I love the solo story where others can't muck it up for me.